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The sale of failed trucker Yellow’s real estate is turning into a battle for a competitive edge in a corner of the trucking industry that forms a crucial part of the U.S. economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Estes Express Lines, the largest privately held trucking company in the country with revenues last year of more than $5 billion, is the stalking-horse, or lead bidder, for Yellow’s nationwide network of truck terminals with a bid of $1.525 billion. If Estes wins the auction, scheduled for late November, it would give the Richmond, Va.-based operator a big leg up in the thriving less-than-truckload segment of the trucking industry. The sector has been growing about 15% to 20% annually over the past two years and well-run LTL carriers are operating with margins of 15% or more, said Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group. “It’s even more attractive and desirable to have control over the assets which are critical entry barriers,” Jindel said. Yellow went out of business this summer, dragged down by years of poor management, heavy debts and a fight with the Teamsters union. It left behind about 30,000 workers, 170 terminals and a once-in-a-generation opportunity for rivals to expand.

An award-winning North Texas distillery that declared bankruptcy earlier this year has been purchased for $6 million, according to U.S. bankruptcy court records, the Dallas Morning News reported. Les Beasley, the master distiller and founder of Whiskey Hollow, received a $250,000 deposit toward the sale from the buyer, Pals WH Holdings LLC. Kevin Lange is listed as the firm’s president in an asset purchase agreement filing. He’s an Austin-based financial adviser and owner of Legacy One Financial Advisers, a wealth management firm. When the deal closes, the deposit will be applied as a credit against the $6 million purchase. Included in the purchase and sale of assets are typical elements, like the land and the facility with all its improvements. Also included in the deal, according to court documents, are machinery, vehicles, inventory, ingredients and finished goods. The filings detail the barrels by spirit age, what kind of wood the liquors aged in and the thousands of bottles in inventory.

Shift Technologies said it would file a petition for chapter 11 protection as it winds down its business, MarketWatch.com reported. The San Francisco-based used-car retailer said Friday it would use cash on hand and proceeds from selling off inventory to support shutting down operations during bankruptcy. Shift said on its website and two locations in Oakland, Calif., and Pomona, Calif., have stopped operations. Chief Executive Ayman Moussa said the company attempted to raise funds and restructure to allow for continuing operations, but those efforts were unsuccessful. "This was not the outcome we had expected or hoped to achieve," Moussa said. The company announced a restructuring in July, reducing 34% of its workforce, to cut costs and extend its cash runway.

Investigators at a key US regulator have concluded that the co-founder of Voyager Digital Ltd. broke derivatives regulations before the failed crypto lender plunged into bankruptcy last year, Bloomberg News reported. Staff in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement division recommended internally that the agency accuse Stephen Ehrlich of breaking its rules by misleading customers about the safety of their assets following a probe into Voyager’s conduct. CFTC commissioners are now voting on whether to approve an enforcement action against him within days, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the confidential deliberations. The CFTC can seek fines and impose other non-criminal penalties on those it accuses of wrongdoing. The agency, whose investigations don’t always result in enforcement actions, declined to comment. Voyager disclosed in August 2022 as part of its bankruptcy case that the CFTC had sought information related to its business, customers and lending activities. Ehrlich, who was also chief executive officer when Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing. In an emailed statement, he said he was “angered and perplexed” by the government’s anticipated civil claims and called them unfounded.

Sam Bankman-Fried authorized the illegal use of FTX customers' funds and assets to plug financial gaps at an affiliated hedge fund from the exchange's earliest days, FTX's co-founder Gary Wang told a New York jury on Friday, as prosecutors pressed their case that Bankman-Fried was the mastermind behind one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history, the Associated Press reported. Eventually, the losses at the hedge fund, Alameda Research, became so large that there was no way to hide them any longer, Wang said in his second day of testimony. “FTX was not fine,” Wang said, referring to the now-infamous tweet that Bankman-Fried wrote only a few days before the exchange filed for bankruptcy in November 2022. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars from investors and customers in order to fund a lavish lifestyle in The Bahamas and buy the influence of politicians, celebrities and the public. Wang was FTX's chief technology officer and is part of what has been referred to as the “inner circle” of FTX executives who have agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried in exchange for leniency in their own criminal cases. He is expected to finish his testimony Tuesday. Wang has pleaded guilty to wire fraud, securities and commodities fraud as part of his agreement with prosecutors.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra said if an attempt to invalidate his agency's funding is successful before the Supreme Court, it would add more uncertainty for the mortgage industry and create "a lot of headaches" for consumers, YahooFinance.com reported. “I think [on] the whole financial markets are much better off with the CFPB there,” Chopra told Yahoo Finance on Friday. "I think if a CFPB had existed in the early 2000s, we wouldn't have had a subprime mortgage crisis." The interview with Chopra was his first since the Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a challenge to the funding structure of the CFPB, a financial regulator that was created by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the aftermath of the subprime housing meltdown and financial crisis in 2008. Payday lenders, who brought the challenge, have argued that the CFPB's funding that it receives through the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional and that funding should be appropriated by Congress. The Supreme Court justices, however, appear likely to uphold that structure based on what transpired Tuesday, when some of them sounded skeptical of the arguments made by the payday lenders.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s two multimillion-dollar luxury jets are now subject to forfeiture, according to a filing from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on Oct. 4, CoinTelegraph.com reported. The document states the possibility of forfeiture comes as a result of the “offenses described in Counts One through Four and Seven of Indictment 22 Cr. 673 (LAK),” which were brought against Bankman-Fried. The aircraft listed are a Bombardier Global and an Embraer Legacy. These two aircraft are currently at the heart of an ownership debacle between the government, FTX and the aviation company operating the jets, Island Air Capital, according to documents filed on Sept. 21 with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. In the arguments, the government said both aircraft are subject to forfeiture due to being purchased with fraudulent funds, while FTX says the loans used to purchase the jets were not documented.

An estimated 1 million customers are potentially facing losses after FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges at the time, suddenly collapsed and filed for bankruptcy in November, Reuters reported. It soon emerged that customer funds had gone missing. FTX founder and former-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is accused of embezzling $10 billion from unsuspecting customers to prop up his hedge fund Alameda Research, buy luxury properties and fund political donations. His trial began in New York this week. On Wednesday, Bankman-Fried's attorney told the court that his client had overlooked risk management but did not steal customer money. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors are calling some FTX customers to testify that they were told their assets were safe, and to share how FTX's collapse affected them. Customers Reuters spoke with said they have created support groups to help each another navigate the complex bankruptcy claims process, while others said they have been targeted by scammers promising to retrieve their cash.

Texas Capital Bank said it was convinced by the U.S. government to loan $28 million in December to help a bankrupt reverse-mortgage company fund payments to elderly homeowners and avert a crisis in the reverse-mortgage industry, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. But the Dallas lender was left empty-handed after the government said it extinguished the bank’s collateral rights, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Government National Mortgage Association, known as Ginnie Mae, and its parent agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Texas Capital Bank said that it was induced by Ginnie Mae to extend a bankruptcy loan to Reverse Mortgage Investment Trust, one of the largest lenders participating in the government-backed reverse-mortgage program. HUD and Ginnie Mae declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Starwood Capital Group-backed RMIT filed for chapter 11 in November with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., facing a liquidity crunch because of rising interest rates. After the bankruptcy filing, RMIT failed to fund payments to thousands of elderly homeowners, according to the bank’s complaint. Ginnie Mae allegedly told Texas Capital Bank that its loan was needed to fund those draws while avoiding a catastrophic disruption to the reverse-mortgage program, the bank said in its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas.

Bankrupt regional sports network operator Diamond Sports Group is walking away from the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes and shuttering yet another channel, Bally Sports Arizona, YahooFinance.com reported. The move comes after the network’s other tenants, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, all broke loose from Bally Sports and set up their own local TV arrangements. Broadcaster E.W. Scripps announced yesterday that the Coyotes would broadcast 81 of their 82 regular season games via its new Scripps Sports operation on Scripps-owned ABC affilate Channel 15.2 (KNXV.2). The Stanley Cup Champion Vegas Golden Knights also entered a similar arrangement with Scripps Sports in May after fleeing now-defunct AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain. “The Debtors have been conducting an ongoing analysis of their rights agreement portfolio to identify those rights agreements that are burdensome and/or otherwise unnecessary for the Debtors’ go-forward business operations,” Diamond said in a motion filed on Wednesday in the Houston federal court overseeing its restructuring.